


IX

by Crowgirl



Series: Welcoming Silences [10]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Daydreaming, Experimentation, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:27:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4766678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had a girlfriend once, just before he met Jane, who said he was all one color and he wonders if she meant beige.</p>
            </blockquote>





	IX

That evening he’s uneasy in his skin. Everything that touches him seems like a little too much and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s overheated.

He ends up cooking dinner in his shirtsleeves, enjoying the cool tile under his sock-clad foot. It’s only recently struck him that, with Jane gone, he can dismiss his recent habit of hiding the prosthesis by pretending that he simply hasn’t taken off his shoes. Since he’s the one who has to live with it for the rest of his life, it seems only fair that he get the chance to get used to it and he walks around the kitchen a little defiantly -- and then laughs at himself because who is he defying?

* * *

He can’t seem to concentrate on his book after dinner; he finds himself sitting and staring at the grate, his mind wandering between David and the pier at Brighton, Foyle’s smile, packing for Jane, and what he should do with the house when The Decision, as he’s begun thinking of it, is final.

He takes the snap of him and David out of his breast pocket and flattens it on the cover of his book, studying it again. He wishes he had left himself a note: _yes, I was intending to kiss him_ or _no, I wasn’t, don’t be daft_ and whether his eighteen-year-old self had wished they had kissed. He knows he does now -- perhaps if he’d kissed David then, he’d be better armed to deal with Foyle now.

And at that, he sighs aloud and lets his head roll back against the chair, staring up at where the wall meets the ceiling. There’s a thin swag of spiderweb there, decorating the light blue paint, and he thinks he should find the duster before it gets any thicker or starts attracting flies on its own. 

‘There is nothing to deal with,’ he says aloud and then groans. He’s going to become one of _those_ men. He can see it coming: always home early, always cleaning things, always _talking_ to himself. ‘No,’ he tells himself and gets up. He doesn’t know where the duster is anyway and he’s not going searching for it now. Since he can’t think of anything better to do, he can sleep. If the Army taught him nothing else, it was how to sleep practically on command.

* * *

He turns off the electric fire, leaves his book on the table beside his chair, and makes his usual round of the house. It’s habit more than any real fear someone will try to break in -- he’s fairly sure even the thickest of the local roughs is bright enough not to break into an officer’s house.

The night outside has gotten cold and damp and he shivers as he locks the back door and then gets himself up the back stairs to the bedroom. He likes the back stairs better than the front because they’re narrower: he can brace himself between the handrail and the wall if he feels unsteady. He’s gotten quite good at stairs; if someone didn’t know, they’d probably just think he had a stiff knee or perhaps a bad back. 

* * *

He can’t quite think of it as just _his_ bedroom yet, but he imagines that’s only a matter of time. It certainly doesn’t look as though there’s anyone sharing the space with him: his side of the wardrobe is the only one open; it’s his dressing gown slung over the bottom of the bed, and two of his ties thrown on the dressing table in front of the mirror. Jane had never been much for knick-knacks and her small vanity, tucked in the corner by what had been her side of the bed, is more or less empty; he imagines she took most of her things with her. There’s no make-up, her bottle of perfume is gone, her brush and comb, the flat box she kept her jewelry in. There’s a half-burned candle on a chipped saucer, the wick thick with grease, one torn stocking dangling out of a drawer, and a scarf he knows for a fact she didn’t like very much draped across a corner of the mirror. There’s also a faint smell of perfume and powder and an even fainter smell of sweat but that will vanish soon enough.

He pauses for a minute before drawing the blackout curtain across; here and there in the darkness of the streets he can see the sparkle of a poorly shaded light and he imagines the poor ARP warden making his way around the damp streets and knocking on doors. It’s too wet to enjoy a night-time stroll and he’s thankful that this particular duty hadn’t fallen to the police for longer than a week or two while the civilian patrols were organized. It would have been a little much to expect him and Foyle to wander the town asking people to turn down their lamps.

He smiles at the thought: he can just imagine what Foyle would have to say if he were hauled out on a night like this, the mist turning to rain and the air chilling around them. There wouldn’t be any street lights, so they would have to walk slowly and-- He has a sudden vivid vision of what it would be like, standing in the dark, wet street, Foyle silent beside him, and a wave of warmth sweeps through his body, leaving him tingling.

‘No,’ he says again, and draws the curtain across, pinning the sides in place and turning to switch on his bedside lamp.

He hums tunelessly to himself as he moves about the room, hanging up his ties, leaving his shirt on the hanger for tomorrow, dropping his wristwatch on the bedside table. He sits down to pull his trousers off and, once that’s done, stands up to hang them in the wardrobe. Stepping back towards the bed, he catches sight of himself in the broad mirror above the dressing table at the foot of the bed and stops. 

His first instinct is to grab for his dressing gown, get himself covered as quickly as possible. His second is to laugh. He looks _ludicrous_ : tall, thin, pale, hair slightly wild from pulling his shirt off, stripes on his pants starting to fade from careless laundering, his left knee a tangled mess. 

He successfully fights back the first impulse. Jane isn’t here anymore and he can stand in his bedroom in his shorts if he wants to. 

He turns towards the mirror and studies himself. He sees what he’s always seen although perhaps now most of it is in slightly better shape. Those daily drills were good for something after all.

Paul sucks in his cheeks and then puffs them out, shrugging. He’s tall and narrow, just as he’s always been tall and narrow. He had a girlfriend once, just before he met Jane, who said he was all one color and he wonders if she meant beige. 

He rubs at a small pink scar on his shoulder -- another souvenir of Trondheim although barely to be noticed in comparison with his leg. His chest is the same, shoulders a little more heavily muscled, stomach the same if a little flatter, there’s the same light fuzz of blond hair on his thighs and calves -- or at least on one of them. 

The scar tissue starts just below his left knee, a tangle of brownish white, shiny skin that disappears into the cup of the prosthetic. His knee aches when he looks at it and he reaches down to rub at it automatically, then sits on the end of the bed and begins to unstrap the false piece.

It’s easier now that his fingers have learned the routine and he doesn’t have to crane forward over his thigh and watch every move. The straps fall away with a _clunk_ against the leg and he lifts it away from the stump. The handkerchief pad he keeps inside is still white and he leaves it where it is, putting the leg itself on one side at the bottom of the bed. 

He rubs at his knee again and looks at himself in the mirror. The rounded stub of his leg is a knot of skin and muscle drawn together into a pucker over the nub of bone. It looks as though his leg has melted back into itself or his knee has been wrapped up in its own skin like a package. The front of what remains of his shin is smooth and hairless. 

It’s not attractive -- he’ll be the first to say it. It’s a big, ugly scar that he’s never going to be able to hide in any sort of intimacy. His knee bends uselessly at the edge of the mattress and the stub of his leg simply hangs; if he wants to reposition it, he still has to move it with his hands or move his whole leg from the hip. 

He wiggles the toes of his other feet on the carpet and frowns at them, leaning back on his elbows and stretching his right leg out luxuriously. He lets himself sag back on the mattress and stares at his reflection. 

‘Not even middle-aged and look at you,’ he tells himself. ‘No wife, no girlfriend, no --’ He hesitates and lets the sentence drift away, glancing over at his shirt where the snapshot of himself and David makes a dark patch in the breast pocket.

It wasn’t as if he had ever been one of those men who had a different girl every weekend -- or even the _same_ girl every weekend. He hadn’t been a virgin when he met Jane but it had been pretty much a technical distinction. He’d probably had more actual physical contact with David, although that hadn’t been his intent. Or...maybe it had; everything is starting to look a little fuzzy-edged at this point.

Idly, more to check that everything’s still where he remembers it is than anything else, he slides a hand under the elastic of his pants and cups it over his cock. The jolt of sensation is surprising and he gasps -- and then it’s not so surprising when he remembers how long it’s been. 

Well. He’s on his own now, isn’t he? To all intents and purposes, anyway. Certainly alone in his own bedroom. 

* * *

He skins off the rest of his clothes, turns off the light, and slides in under the bedclothes. The smoothness of cloth against so much of his skin, after months of sleeping in at least vest and pants, is almost overwhelming for a minute and he has to lay quiet and breathe to take it in. 

When that feeling dies back a little, he smoothes a hand down over his chest, starting just at the top of his rib cage over his heart, dipping a thumb into the hollow around his navel, and sliding his fingers back into a loose grip around his cock. Even though he knows it’s coming, the spark of arousal is shocking and he grips the sheets with his free hand. 

The sheets warm quickly around him, mirroring back the growing heat of his body as he slowly, steadily works himself to full arousal, raising his right knee slightly to get the weight of the bedclothes off his erection. He’s never liked that kind of pressure.

He doesn’t think of anything in particular at first, too focused on the physical sensations he hasn’t felt in a long time: the desire to gasp for breath, the minute muscle tremors of his thighs, the desire to push _up,_ into or against something that he has to manage the best he can with a clenched fist. His thumb hits a sensitive spot just at the base of his cock on one downstroke and he cries out, straining to find the spot again. He does, and caresses it with his thumb, pressing and pushing until he’s dripping moisture onto his fingers and his grip is no longer firm but slick and sweet.

He doesn’t realise until he tastes salt that he’s pressing his free hand over his mouth. Without meaning to, he’s biting at his fingers, licking his skin until his lips feel swollen and he presses his palm hard over them, stifling his own moaning. He lifts his hand so he can drag in a deep breath and drags his fingertips over his lips, feeling the hot skin and opening his mouth just slightly so he can trace his fingers with his tongue. He can't remember if this is what he used to do before -- his door carefully closed and the lights out -- or if this is something new but he doesn't care. The sensations are sharp pleasure and he isn't going to worry about details now.

He’s just gripping his cock now, just waiting until he can’t stand the build any more. His hips move lazily on their own, pushing up against nothing and it’s just before he doesn’t want to wait any longer that he thinks of Foyle’s hands, careful among the papers on his desk, warm on his hand across the table at lunch--

‘Oh -- _Christ--_ I---’ He gasps, suddenly desperate, thrusting up into his own hand as hard as he can, the feeling of Foyle’s fingers on his wrist burning into his skin from hours before.


End file.
